We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ceasefire! - TTG

The purple assed mandrill of peace has been spotted among the sunflowers on the steppes of eastern Ukraine… or Novorossiya. There have been only fleeting glimpses so far and no one with open eyes and a clear mind thinks a breeding population will be established anytime soon. 

On the plus side, the current ceasefire has seen a significant reduction of the bombardment of Donetsk and Lugansk. The people of Lugansk are starting to clean up their neighborhoods and rebuild. Electricity, water and communication services are beginning to be reestablished. Refugees are returning to their homes. However, neither side sees this truce as a prelude to peace, just a lull before the fighting resumes. The Ukies are using the truce to regroup and redeploy their battered forces. They needed this respite badly. That is what they have done in every other truce they have called. Separatist militia leaders Alexei Mozgovoi and Igor Bezler have noted this and decided to stay on the offensive. Bezler said, “Ukraine’s criminal authorities resumed military operations. Now there is no way back for us. There is a long road ahead – to Kiev!” That is the general opinion of the separatist fighters. 

But the separatists were not, as some have claimed, on the verge of major victory before the ceasefire was agreed to in Minsk. They also needed a respite to regroup and resupply, if not at 1800 GMT on 6 September, then within a few days of that.Their forces are not strong enough to defeat the entire Ukrainian army or make the run to Odessa to create greater Novorossiya. They are spread thin. The inability to quickly reduce the many pockets of Ukie units is evidence of this. Most of the separatist units operate as small saboteur-reconnaissance groups. This is how Mozgovoi described the evolving tactics employed by his Ghost Brigade: 

“Here are the outlines of a few situations in which my unit has participated. I will start with the failures – the defense of Lisichansk. To suppress our forces, Ukraine threw eleven thousand men at us. Our lack of success was characterized by the fact that we were still true to the original tactics – the tactics of a clean fight: creating a clear front, setting up checkpoints. That was a mistake. This war, constructed by Ukies, is built on deceit: from the news to the battlefield; and because we were expecting a clean fight, we suffered casualties. I feel the loss of my men, most severely. For me, a loss of even a few individuals is a painful blow. 

“Yes, we have won fights; we pushed the enemy and they have retreated, but they always returned, in greater numbers, with more weaponry. Here is a shining example of this pattern. They set up a checkpoint at Staraya Krasnyanka, between Kremennoye and Rybezhnoye. We worked it over ten times. One day we destroy it; the next morning it is already manned with new people. Today – destroy, tomorrow morning – new people. Ukies load up Kamaz trucks with corpses and straight away, bring in new personnel – new men destined to become corpses the following day.

“The tactics of the Ukrainian army can be summed up in this: they have placed the full weight of war upon the artillery and the rocket launchers. They commence an attack with a purge of territory, which they do using Grads and self-propelled artillery systems. 

“They call it targeted attacks but the outcomes of such attacks are huge areas, whole squares swept “clean”. Afterwards, the tanks arrive with means to destroy in case anyone is left alive somewhere. Finally, their armored personnel carriers follow, manned with soldiers to finish up. It seems like their tactics are unbeatable. That is the reason why we’ve changed our own tactics.

“Even though we have grown in numbers, I refuse to send men into the open. We prefer to work in saboteur-reconnaissance groups (“SRG”): they went, they saw, they worked, and they returned. That’s all. We work on their communications; we work on their distributions and their ammunition warehouses. If they don’t have ammo, they don’t have the ability to fire. 

“Only yesterday I was informed about the destruction of a column of 10 Urals trucks that were delivering the missiles for the Grads, which were headed toward Donetsk. What can be more effective? Even if they have the launchers, without the shells those are simply piles of scrap metal, ballast. We hit them with RPGs and “Shmels” grenade launchers. (Colonel Cassad) 

Mozgovoi, BTW, is not at all pleased with the Minsk agreement and the bogus ceasefire. Not only did he decide to remain on the offensive after Ukie forces opposing him violated the ceasefire, but he has called for the political leadership of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics to step down.

 

The U.S. Marines toyed with this concept in experiments with swarm tactics and distributed operations, which culminated in the HUNTER WARRIOR advanced warfare experiment. Here’s a link to download a NPGS thesis entitled "Swarm Tactics and the Doctrinal Void: Lessons from the Chechen Wars." It seems the Russians learned the lessons and passed them on to the militia of Novorossiya. Too bad we went all COIN crazy since then. (The link to this document will immediately go to a Google download page. Don’t worry. It’s not a virus.)

In spite of their awesome tactics, IMO the militia of Novorossiya was getting dangerously close to overextending themselves. The drive south from Donetsk began with furtive advances by small SRGs along the border. It developed into a dash to the coast before turning west to the gates of Mariupol. SRGs even pushed further west bypassing Mariupol. With Ukie reinforcements moving from throughout Ukraine to Mariupol, those separatists to the far west wisely withdrew. Without the ceasefire, those SRGs probably would have continued west towards the Crimean Isthmus. The Ukie reinforcements would still arrive and the separatists themselves could have been caught in a cauldron of their own. 

The half assed ceasefire may have broken the momentum of the separatist counteroffensive, but it did not halt the Novorossiyan resistance. Partisan activity in Kharkov,Odessa and Zaporozhye oblasts is increasing. Kharkov partisans set up a fake CP, halted a convoy of conscripts, disarmed officers, told the rest to go home. Nine of 84 joined the militia. Even Kiev is not immune. One of Yarosh’s Pravy Sektor units was attacked and the officers eliminated. If Novorossiya is to be more than the territory they now control, the partisans will play a key part. The partisans and the majority of the Ukrainian people turning on the junta and their extremist legions. The following is a translation of a posting of a Ukrainian junta supporter in Odessa. 

To my horror I understand that that only a few patriots work in our schools. Few of those who are true patriots to the depth of their souls. Odessa universities are a separate story. Listen, what is it that we were building over all these years? What can I say to my 14-year-old nephew, who says that in his class only he and another pupil are "for Ukraine", and everybody else "loves Russia"? What can I tell to an acquaintance of mine who is a teacher, who tells me that their director read an "SBU letter" during a meeting of teacher council with a recommendation of not touching the topic of the war and not mentioning the Ukrainian army during the lesson entitled "united Ukraine"? What can I tell to a female teacher, whose colleague hissed to her face: "I'll hang you first once the Russians will arrive!" Galina Z. continues to teach in the Institute of Internal Affairs. The very same person who cried on air in Kiselyov's program (n.b. a popular Russian TV program) and told how people were eaten in the House of Unions, she saw how "nazis wiped their lips with napkins". A couple of months ago I thought that we broke out. But it turned out to be an illusion. 

The junta and Nuland’s nightmare are quite fragile. Outside the Pravy Sektor and Svoboda extremists and those paid by the U.S. Embassy to protest at the Maidan,  IMO the Ukrainians would rather live in peace and be on good terms with the West and Russia… or at least not make enemies of either.

I have only addressed the internal situation in this post. In a day or so, I’ll comment on the international aspects.

TTG

Comments

[confusedponderer]

"IMO the Ukrainians would rather live in peace and be on good terms with the West and Russia… or at least not make enemies of either."

Agreed. The polls from the time before the crisis consistently suggested nothing less: Independence from Russia and no membership in NATO.

That would allow Ukraine to take from both sides what they can get, while both sides have influence but neither side has control. If not for the endemic corruption and the oligarchs, they could do as well as the Finns. What's not to like. Everybody but the nuts could be happy.

But this isn't enough! Our imperial overlords in their fathomless wisdom have passed that the Ukrainians are to choose betwen East and West, and spent 5 billion to make sure the answer ist West. As a result the country has fractured. Which is Moscow's fault for opposing it.

[Dubhaltach]

TTG:
I think you might want to check your link to “Swarm Tactics and the Doctrinal Void: Lessons from the Chechen Wars.”

Which goes to another document entitled "The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory and Concept Based Experimentation:
Armed To Fight in the 21st Century"

A link to the document you cite is this URI:

Given that the length of the link will probably break the site's layout could you please edit it out of this comment once you've altered the URI in your posting?

Dubhaltach

[Dubhaltach]

TTG: I agree with you that the momentum seems to have been lost for the Novorossiyan forces but also that they were in danger of overextending. I find myself wondering whether they came under very strong pressure to agree to a ceasefire from - let us say their backers, precisely in order to allow them to regroup and perhaps re-equip? I'm asking you to speculate I know but I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

Dubhaltach

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to confusedponderer 09 September 2014 at 05:26 AM

Ah but "Finlandisation" has always been a dirty word. Didn't you get the memo? Check your inbox - It's the one written in runes on hide and dating back to ....

Dubhaltach

[The Twisted Genius]

Dubhaltach,

Thanks for that. I fixed the link in the post and removed the long assed URL in your comment.

[The Twisted Genius]

Dubhaltach,

I have no doubt there was extreme pressure by Russia. Putin is doing his level best to reduce the risk of nuclear war while still seeking his regional and global objectives. More on that later.

[confusedponderer]

Oh, I know the word.

In the Wiki entry on 'Finlandisation' there is a sentence that is worth quoting in full:

"In Finland, the term "Finlandization" was perceived as blunt criticism, stemming from an inability to understand the practicalities of how a small nation needs to deal with an adjacent superpower without losing its sovereignty."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

It isn't, as the polemicists have it, submission.

The Fins in sum did rather well despite it. The Finnish model would be one in which Ukraine would do well in the end. What's so bad about neutrality?

[FB Ali]

Re long URLs, you may like to check this out (it works!):

http://tinyurl.com/

[J]

TTG,

Here's a mini-series that I thought you'd find interesting, it's about a ГРУ 'retiree' who still has a lot of energy about him.

Отставник (2009, 2010, 2011).Три серии
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9OVc_1JJHM

[Piotr, Poland]

@TTG

1 Lets look at Ukrainian Presidential Elections 2014 official results:
[...]
- Tiagnibok (Svoboda) - 1% of votes
- Yarosh (Pravyy Sector) - 1% of votes
- Vadim Rabinovitch, Jewish candidate - 2% of votes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidadesnik/2014/05/29/ukraine-election-results-discredit-kremlin-propaganda/

Do you still mind calling Ukrainians "Fashists" is appropriate thing?

2. Can you name just one (or more, if possible) political organisation in Ukraine claimed federalisation of that country or openly demanded secession of so called Novorosiya from Ukraine before 2014?

Normaly, before beginning of military phase of national conflict, we have political phase of it, where a political organisation demands as loudly as possible autonomy for the region, or creation of the new country etc. (examples - IRA in Ireland or FRETILIN in East Timor).

How can you explain lack of political phase in Ukraine/Russia national conflict?
Can you show any other national conflict which started from military action without any political separatist activities before?

[confusedponderer]

Or as put in these immortal lines:

"That's detente, comrade. I don't have it, you don't have it!"

[Fred]

Piotr,

You mean the results of the 2014 post coup sham election? That was sure a free and fair election. The political phase you are looking for was ten years long and funded with $5 billion from the NED.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to confusedponderer 09 September 2014 at 10:53 AM

There you go being reasonable again, bad, bad, bad, you can join me and seemingly most of the readership of this site in the corner reserved for the willfully reasonable. It's the polemicists setting the agenda, would that it were not.

Yes the Finns did very well out of neutrality as indeed did the Swedes, the Swiss, the Irish.

Dubhaltach

[kao_hsien_chih]

CP, Dubhaltach,

Another example, perhaps, would be the Swiss (and the Swedes and the Irish) during World War II. They were not exactly "friends" of the Nazis (or the English, in case of the Irish), but collaborated with them to the degree that served their needs and wants, while also cooperating with the Allies (or, politely neutral with regards to the Nazis, in case of the Irish--who, as far as I know, never actively cooperated with Germany at the government level) as necessary, while "resisting" both sides, even with force of arms, when necessary. On the whole, they did quite well during the war, but decades later, they are deemed as a sort of moral whores for having done so, including, I believe, by a substantial number of their own people.

As AJP Taylor supposedly said, people learn all the wrong things from history.

[kao_hsien_chih]

Piotr,

Notwithstanding the lack of popular support, Svoboda and Pravy Sektor do enjoy disproportionate share of power in the current Kiev government and are involved in making the extreme, polarizing decisions that exacerbated the internal conflicts within Ukraine.

Let's think of it this way. The original Nazis, those in 1930s Germany, NEVER enjoyed support from anything approaching a majority of Germans. But they did run the country with iron hand for more than a decade.

There is one major example where the secessionist politics spread like wildfire and led to a big military conflict within half a year: United States in 1860-1. With the exception of South Carolina (and this is rather debatable) there was no serious prior talk of actual secession in most of the to-be-Confederate States, especially in places like Virginia. Fighting began while people were still mulling in a number of states and that sealed the issue.

[kao_hsien_chih]

Correction to above:

I should have said serious talk of secession "in the South." There were both serious philosophical debates about secession and an actual convention to discuss possibility of secession (in New England) before the Civil War....

[Dubhaltach]

Many Thanks - I never seem to get around to trying that out. Really I'll have to start.

Dubhaltach

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to The Twisted Genius 09 September 2014 at 09:35 AM

I'll look forward to it.

Dubhaltach

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to Piotr, Poland 09 September 2014 at 10:56 AM

If it looks like a duck, walks and swims like a duck, quacks like a duck. Then it's reasonable to call it a duck.

This applies to fascists as well. And please don't even _think_ of trying to pretend that the current Ukrainian regime isn't thoroughly infiltrated by nationalists and ethnic chauvinists so rabid that fascist is an entirely apposite description both of their political beliefs and behaviour.

Dubhaltach

[The Twisted Genius]

Piotr,

The problem is not the Ukrainian people. It is the junta in Kiev. The junta is fascist and is pursuing virulently fascist policies. That's what sparked calls for federalization early this year and, eventually, calls for outright succession in the east. I blame neocon and R2P enablement of the Svoboda and Pravy Sektor fascists for this mess.

[ToivoS]

The Ukraines have always voted tactically in presidential elections. The fascist parties have polled about %10 nationally in the legislative elections with the Lvov oblast polling about %30. However, I agree that the Ukrainian people do not support them and it is not correct to call them fascist. But after the coup, it is not incorrect to point out that the knew government is now heavily influenced by the fascists. It is especially noteworthy that the interior ministry is headed by the Svoboda party and they are responsible for building a new federal police force under the designation of a 'national guard'.

[robt willmann]

Here is the downloadable "Preliminary Report" about the crash on 17 July of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which went down over Ukraine. It is by the Dutch Safety Board.

http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf

http://www.safetyboard.nl

Some of the pieces of wreckage had "multiple holes and indentations" (p. 22), "numerous small holes and indentations" (p. 23), "puncture holes" (p. 23), "holes indicating penetration from outside" (p. 24), "material around the holes was deformed in a manner consistent with being punctured by high-energy objects" (p. 24), "material deformation around the puncture holes appear to indicate that the objects originated from outside the fuselage" (p. 24), "Puncture holes identified in images of the cockpit suggested that small objects entered from above the level of the cockpit floor" (p. 25), and "The pattern of damage observed in the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft was consistent with the damage that would be expected from a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside" (p. 25).

Hmmm..."numerous small holes", "puncture holes", "small objects", "punctured by high-energy objects", a "large number" of "high-energy objects", apparently zeroed in on the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft.

This is all deliberately and shamefully vague, although the report seems to say that some of the wreckage has not yet been recovered, and it is unclear how much of the wreckage has been recovered and how much has been forensically examined.

[David Habakkuk]

Piotr, Poland,

Popular support, as Stalin could have told you, is relevant, but only up to a point. Also important is who controls what a Stalinist would have called the 'organs'. An article by in 'The National Interest' by David C. Hendrickson in March is to the point – note the phrase 'where the coercive power of the state resides':

'It has yet to be reported in major western newspapers that the new government installed in Ukraine on February 26, after the deposition and flight of Viktor Yanukovych, includes eight figures associated with Ukraine’s far right. The positions they have filled are not insignificant. They include deputy prime minister, chief prosecutor, defense minister and head of the national-security council, portfolios where the coercive power of the state resides. Svoboda, the main nationalist party, has made some attempt to shed its fascist lineage, but the World Jewish Congress last year asked the EU to consider banning it, and there is much in its history and outlook that should be deeply troubling to westerners. Dmytro Yarosh, head of the “Right Sector,” is Deputy Secretary of National Security in the interim government; among his comrades are men who joined in fighting the Russians in Chechnya, and who see the Chechens as their allies. Right Sector is a paramilitary organization, like Greece’s Golden Dawn; their entry into a European government is an important milestone, and not of the celebratory sort.

'The amazing thing is that the composition of the new government has attracted no attention. None of the major newspapers – I checked the FT, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal – had seen fit to report it (as of Saturday, March 8, two weeks after the announcements). On March 5, Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com published a full investigation; Raimando’s column was itself partially based on a March 5 story by Britain’s Channel 4. But it is still not news in mainstream media land.'

(See http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/getting-ukraine-wrong-10030 .)

On anti-Semitism in West Ukraine, an interview with Omer Bartov, an historian of the region, whose forbears managed to escape the Holocaust, may be of interest to you. An extract:

'Antisemitism is especially strong in those parts of Ukraine where there are the lowest numbers of Jews and where complicity in the eradication of Jewish communities was greatest – that is, in the regions where the collaborators in the genocide were also those who were seen then, and are seen again now, following the collapse of communism, as the national heroes and liberators of Ukraine. So antisemitism is linked intimately to the absence of Jews rather than to their presence. This is most of all the case in Western Ukraine, the former Eastern Galicia, which was the cradle of Ukrainian nationalism, and from which the Jews were most systematically eradicated with particularly close collaboration from Ukrainian nationalists, who dreamed of a Ukraine free of Jews and Poles. Indeed, the main antisemitic argument in Western Ukraine today is that the government in Kiev is controlled by the Jews, and by their alleged “Jew-oligarchs” from Russia.'

(See http://forward.com/articles/12231/tracing-galicia-a-talk-with-omer-bartov-/ .)

[David Habakkuk]

robt willman,

One thing that may perhaps be new in the report is the last FDR point on the Google Earth picture on page 21 – which is several kilometres along an azimuth of a bit less than 300 degrees (guesstimate) from Pelahiivka.

If this is supposed to be the point at which the plane was hit, it would not appear to match early Western claims about social media showing a vertical launch from somewhere in the Torez/Snizhne area.

(For a 20 July FT article recycling such claims, see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dcc628-1010-11e4-90c7-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3BKLzWdAq .)

Whether this FDR point can be reconciled with the claims made in the very curious briefing given on 22 July by U.S. intelligence analysts, which showed a missile launched from Snizhne rising not vertically but at something like a 40 degree angle to the ground, is not clear to me.

(For these claims see http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-intelligence-us-20140722-story.html . )

[FB Ali]

The easiest way is to put the TinyURL icon on your toolbar (just click and drag as shown on their page). Once there all you have to do is just click on the icon whenever needed, and it will produce a TinyURL, which you copy to your clipboard with another click.

In other words, once you have it on your toolbar, all it needs is TWO clicks of the mouse to use. Couldn't be easier!